Why Gezi Park Isn't Resonating in the Rest of Turkey

The fault lines between Gezi Park and the rest of Turkey, cemented by decades of low-decibel class and culture war, run deep.

ENLARGE

An anti-government protester rested next to tents in Gezi Park in Istanbul's Taksim Square.
Reuters

By

Lauren E. Bohn And

Elmira Bayrasli

June 28, 2013 4:20 p.m. ET

A gaggle of tea-slurping men sat around a small patch of grass in Kayseri, an industrial city in Turkey's heartland, planning to overthrow the government of Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Nearby, a few of their comrades slept in tattered tents pitched next to a makeshift library, displaying Dostoyevsky's "The Humiliated and Insulted" and a patchwork of revolutionary texts. The 20-odd chain-smoking protesters have been assembled here since the end of May to support the demonstrations in Istanbul's Gezi Park—ground zero for the antigovernment movement that has made international headlines and has led many to speculate about the birth of a "Turkish Spring."

Flags bearing the likeness of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the staunchly secular founder of modern Turkey, hung feebly from trees next to a banner that read, "Dictator Tayyip Will Have To Answer," a direct shot at the prime minister.

"We will be here until the end," said Aykutalp Avsar, head of the Kayseri chapter of the Turkish Youth Association.

But the "end" might be a long time in coming. Even on a sunny Saturday with thousands of residents milling about, few people stopped to observe the protesters' effort. Unlike their trigger-happy, tear-gas equipped counterparts in Istanbul and Ankara, police officers here shrugged at the sit-in, showing more interest in Kayseri's gleaming bike-share station just across the way.

It is clear that gezi, which means "travel" in Turkish, has not managed to make the journey to this part of Turkey. And that is precisely the movement's weakness. The fault lines between Gezi Park and the rest of Turkey, cemented by decades of low-decibel class and culture war, run deep.

Those who have rallied behind the protests in Istanbul are angry over Turkey's increasingly diminishing space for dissent under Mr. Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). They maintain that the Gezi protests are about restoring Turkey to the path of democracy and fighting Mr. Erdogan's increasingly autocratic rule. Mr. Erdogan, they argue, silences the media, doles out government contracts to his supporters and is bent on imposing his Islamic values on their personal lives. A recent restriction on alcohol sales became a flash point—proof, Gezi supporters say, of the prime minister's creeping intention to replace constitutional law with Islamic law, Shariah. They have gone so far as to call for his resignation.

But from the vantage point of Kayseri, almost 400 miles away, regime change seems unlikely. "I'm not sure what all those people are marching for," a cook at a local kebab eatery said. "I'm not sure what they want from the government. What are they going to change?"

Power, rather than change, has defined Turkish politics for most of the country's 90-year modern history. Until quite recently, the military was the dominant force in public life, enforcing Ataturk's path of westernization.

Turkey's founder famously spurned the country's Ottoman past and Islamic roots. Kemalism, as Ataturk's ideology is known, marginalized the majority of the country's citizens, who came to see themselves as "Black Turks," a more pious lower class suppressed by the "white" secular elite. Until Mr. Erdogan's rise, this elite, with its close connections to the military, exercised nearly total control. "In this country, there is segregation of Black Turks and White Turks," Mr. Erdogan once said. "Your brother Tayyip belongs to the Black Turks."

As Turkey's leader, Mr. Erdogan has focused on the economy, which has averaged annual growth of 5% to 7%. His economic reform agenda has led to increased foreign investment, the stabilization of a previously weak and volatile Turkish lira, the taming of inflation and the explosion of startups and small businesses across Anatolia. The country stands among the G-20, the world's most powerful economies, at number 16. Such sweeping improvements made him something of a media darling, with the West heralding him as a model for far more precarious Muslim-majority neighbors in the region.

At home, moreover, Mr. Erdogan has ensured that these riches have reached the "Black Turks." Unlike his predecessors, the Turkish prime minister has consistently engaged the lower, largely rural classes that make up the majority of votes. He has worked to provide this long-neglected group with social services such as education and health care.

The result has been unprecedented social mobility. Under Mr. Erdogan's leadership, Turkey's middle class swelled to 59%—up from 25% in 1995. As the country's middle class expanded, so too did the AKP's mounting gains at the ballot box. On its first go in the 2002 elections, the party won with 34% of the vote. Five years later, its support had increased to 47%, and in 2011 the AKP secured nearly 50% of the Turkish vote.

Still, in places like Kayseri, an AKP stronghold, it is not hard to find unsatisfied AKP voters. A block away from Kayseri's version of Gezi Park, one middle-aged, headscarf-clad woman bemoaned that she's not better off than she was when the party came into office. But the AKP will continue to dominate, she said, as long as there's no real alternative. She applauds the protesters but finds it difficult to relate them.

Mehmet Pekbas, the press officer for the Kayseri chapter of the Republican People's Party (the AKP's main political opposition), acknowledges his party's Achilles' heel. "They won't join us," he said, referring to frustrated AKP constituents. "They think we're anti-religious, that we're alcoholics."

But instead of trying to harness the present moment of discontent, the party's activists linger in air-conditioned offices, festooned with Ataturk posters, drinking tea and fiddling on
Facebook
.

Back on the patch of grass that has become Kayseri's revolutionary command center, Mr. Avsar acknowledges that only a handful of the city's residents are spending their Saturdays protesting Mr. Erdogan's regime, but he is adamant that there are tens of thousands like him in the city. "We're here for the farmers and the common man," he said.

But when pushed on why Gezi isn't resonating more in the Turkish heartland, especially among these very groups, he says, dismissively, "These aren't educated people."

That view also can be found among the demonstrators in Gezi Park and Turkey's ineffective political opposition. It ensures that the recent demonstrations will have a limited reach. Mr. Erdogan's response to Gezi Park has been tone-deaf and heavy-handed, but the fact remains that the protesters are largely talking to themselves in the 140-character echo chamber of Twitter.

To fathom the depths of Erdogan's popularity, one does not need to travel to the Anatolian heartland. In Fatih, a conservative district of Istanbul not far from the posh Taksim Square neighborhood of Cihangir, where protesters eat $15 gourmet pizza while chanting, "We are soldiers of Ataturk," residents proudly declare that they are Black Turks. "Gezi Park never came here," said Zeynep, a 32-year-old stay-at-home mother. "But the AKP has."

—Ms. Bohn is an independent journalist based in Istanbul, formerly a Fulbright fellow in Egypt. Ms. Bayrasli is the author of the forthcoming book, "Steve Jobs Lives in Pakistan: Extraordinary Entrepreneurs in the Developing World." They are preparing to launch "Foreign Policy, Interrupted," an organization dedicated to amplifying female voices in foreign policy.

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